Raaz Herzberg: evaluation

Transcript context

…This trust point is so interesting, especially based on what you said earlier, where what you want it to do is create noise, take some risks. That's extra hard, if you're not someone that the founding team trusts. Can you share some of the things you did that helped create noise, and get the Wiz name out there, that might inspire folks of like, "Oh, that was really cool, we should do something like that?" Yeah. Another insight I had about marketing in the early days was how different it is from product. As a product manager, I was always, and still believe, it's so important to think really hard about everything you add. Less is more. If you decide to build a feature in a product, then A, you're taking engineering time, which is the most valuable resource in every company, in my opinion, and B, in some ways, you can never take it back. It's complicated your product. Even if one customer likes it and uses it, at least at B2B, you're never going to be able to suddenly take it away. Every new feature you add to your product, you'll have to think about, "Okay, how does it work with that feature?" So it's like making a mistake, adding something to the product that is not the right thing, or that is not truly, truly what your customer needed, even if it's what they asked for. But if it's not what they truly needed, it has a huge cost associated with it. Marketing is quite the opposite, in my opinion. There's no cost to anything, no maintenance to anything, no technical depth, no anything. If tomorrow I post a video on Wiz's LinkedIn page, and I think that video is super funny, and nobody likes that video, nothing happened. Tomorrow, I'll post a different video, no maintenance, bye-bye, forgot it ever happened. In some ways, it dawned on me how opposite those things were, and I was like, "Okay, we have to just use it to our advantage. Let's try everything, let's try everything. I'm trying to make noise." It was right before, when I took over, it was before RSA. RSA is the Super Bowl of security companies. So it's where every vendor's come to showcase, and all of our buyers are there, and you know how those conferences go. You pay for having a space assigned to you, and it's a very expensive space to assign to yourself. And we had the exact same spot we had the year before. I said, "Okay, it's a booth at a conference. I'll just make it the weirdest booth ever, because my goal is just having people look and be like, 'Oh, what is Wiz, right? Because they've never heard of me." Instead of doing a classical cyber booth, I decided to say, "Okay, let's scrap our booth, and do a Wiz of Oz booth," which literally looked like a Wiz of Oz booth, and we had actors, like Dorothy, and all those things hanging around there. It looked nothing like any booths in the show, which is a cybersecurity show, things are red and black, and people with hoodies. And we decided to take a completely opposite approach. In general, I also decided that we're going to take a completely opposite approach was brand. I wanted Wiz's brand to, again, my first motive, stand out. I wanted Wiz to have a very positive, optimistic type of brand. So I went all in on, "Scrap whatever we were doing before, which was dark, and go pink, go bright blue, always go optimistic, and focused on magic, not scaring people from the facts, but magic." And that ended up, and it was scary, don't get me wrong. before, which was dark, and go pink, go bright blue, always go optimistic, and focused on magic, not scaring people from the facts, but magic." And that ended up, and it was scary, don't get me wrong. Half of me was like, I remember feeling so scared walking to the show, to the floor trade. Because I was like, "Is this going to be the most terrible, bizarre? Are people going to be like, 'What is she thinking?'" So I knew it could either be a failure, or a hit. And it ended up, the amount of people that stopped by our booth was five times the amount of people that stopped by the year before. It's the exact same space, the exact same investment, because you invest in the space. But also, ever since we do themed booths, every time, we change themes to keep it fun. At this point, you won't see other cyber companies even doing themes. We were just, "Okay, we'll do whatever it takes to make noise," and this is just one example.…

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